Monday, January 31, 2011

How To Make A Stick Horse

When I first made stick horses here, I adapted a no-sew tutorial from Family Fun magazine so I could use my sewing machine. People wrote to ask how I made my stick horses, and I always referred them to that original tutorial. As I made more horses, and eventually unicorns, I drew up a pattern because I wanted uniform-sized horse heads, and the freedom to sew everything on, including the eyes, before gluing the heads to the sticks.

This pattern has been sitting in my to-finish tubs for a long time, as has the stack of torn jeans that I wanted to turn into more horses. After organizing my sewing room, I felt like everything in those tubs needed to go. And people are still writing to ask how to make these stick horses. So here is that pattern and tutorial, and a horse head to give away at the end.

Note that my torn jeans, split open, look like this - just to encourage you that yes, even that hole in the knee is OK for turning out a pretty decent horse:

Here is the pattern. Click on each page so it becomes US letter size (8.5" x 11") and print it out. The first page is templates for the ear and eyes, and a diagram for the bridle. The other 4 pages are to be connected (follow the numbers) into a single, long pattern. This pattern is for both the top and underside of the horse head.

Some notes:

There are NO seam allowances. Every piece in those 5 pages is the FINISHED size. Add your own seam allowances to everything except the eyes and nostrils (which don't need seam allowances).

When you have cut out and stuck the 4 pieces together that form the complete horse head pattern ABEF, use it to cut two pieces of fabric out - one for the top of the head and one for the underside of the head. You will sew them together to form a tube.

If, however, you choose to keep one side seam of the jeans leg, as I did in the picture above, then you should layout the pattern so that either AE or BF (depending on which leg of the jeans you're using) lies along that side seam.

ABCD is the template for the snout/muzzle of the horse. Use it to cut two pieces of brown fleece - one for the top and one for the underside of the head. When the horse head tube is assembled, these two snout pieces will wrap around the entire snout area of the head.

The top of the horse head has all the embellishments - eyes, nostrils, ears, mane, fringe. All the positions for these are marked in black. The only exception is the position for the unicorn horn, which is marked in pink.

The underside of the horse head has only one sewing feature (apart from the snout/muzzle) - and that is the big curved dart that forms the neck. This is drawn in light blue.

It is perfectly OK to deviate from the dimensions of the pattern - I have made many horses and unicorns without a pattern, of different sizes and proportions, just to fit the size of the jeans legs I had to work with. I've also had to shift the positions of the ears, neck and mane to work around pre-existing tears in the fabric.

Instead of sewing on the eyes and nostrils, you can also choose to hot-glue them on when the horse head is finished. I did that with my first horses and unicorns just to be sure the final face wasn't lopsided or unintentionally creepy.

You can use the pattern on actual old jeans, or just cut up brand new fabric. Here is a rough materials list - I am not including yardage because you can figure that out yourself by looking at the pattern pieces:

Old jeans/other fabric

Fleece for the muzzle of the horse

Scrap felt for eyes and nostrils

Fabric for the inside of the ears

Yarn for the mane and fringe - a whole skein is more than enough.

Stuffing

A 1" dowel (mine was a yard long, bought at Michaels) or mopstick

Ribbon for binding the neck of the horse to the dowel

About 2 - 2 1/4 yards of 1" webbing for the bridle.

Long piece of cardboard about 8" wide - or use the cover of a shoebox.

Righto- let's begin.

Step 1

Press the seam allowances of the inside ear piece inwards. This tutorial might be helpful.

Step 2

Top-stitch them to the ear pieces.

Step 3

Pair up one ear piece that has an inside-ear piece sewn on, with one that doesn't. Place them right sides together and sew all around, leaving the bottom edge unsewn. Snip the seam allowances where necessary and turn right side out. Repeat for the other ear.

Step 4

Pleat the bottom edge of the ear to roughly 1 3/4" wide. Sew down this pleat to secure.

Step 5

Make the mane. Wrap about 100 loops of yarn around a piece of cardboard about 8" wide. I used the cover of one of my Abandoned Projects tubs - they are shoebox-sized.

Step 6

Carefully remove all the loops and sew through their midline with regular straight stitch. It is OK if the overall length of the mane increases - we will bunch it up later. Set this aside.

Step 7

Lay and cut out the fabric for the horse head.

If your jeans has a huge rip in it like mine,

position the pattern so that the rip is at the big neck dart.

Cut out the horse head, remembering to add seam allowances. Transfer the positions of the darts for the neck, the mane and the ears/fringe, as well as the eyes and nostrils, onto your fabric.

Step 8

Lay the midline of the mane along the midline of the mane dart, and sew along this midline to attach the mane. You may need to bunch up or spread out the mane in order to fit in the dart.

Step 9

Fold over, and sew the narrow dart to enclose the midline of the mane within it.

Here's a close up of the dart

and how the mane looks, stuck in the dart.

Step 10

Make the fringe. Wrap about 20 loops around the 8" piece of cardboard/storage tub lid

then ease it out carefully, and sew down its midline as with the mane in Step 6. Step 11

Lay the midline of the fringe in position along the midline of the fringe/ear dart. Arrange the ears as shown on each side of the fringe. Sew along the midline of the dart to secure all three in place (you'll be sewing very close to the bottom edge of the ears).

Step 12

Fold the fringe forward, and then the entire fabric over to enclose the ears and the fringe. Then sew shut the dart to secure the ears and fringe within it, the same way you did with the mane in Step 9.

Step 13

Working with the underside piece of the horse head now, sew shut the neck dart. Mine has all the messy rippy bits enclosed within the dart.

Step 14

Attach the snout pieces.

Sew the short edge of one snout piece to the short edge of the other to form a long snout piece- or cut it out as one long piece like I did. Place the top sewing line of the snout piece on line CD, as shown, right sides of the snout piece and the horse head together. Sew along CD.
Flip the snout piece over, topstitch the seam, and sew the bottom edge of the snout piece to AB of the horse head. Stitch on the nostrils.

Step 15

Cut out the eyes - choose comic or come-hither -

and either top-stitch them in place, or save them to glue in position later when the horse head is stuffed and completed.

Step 16

Fold the horse head in half lengthwise, right sides together and sew the long side seam to make a long tube. Notice the lumpy-and-yet-hollow cheek area between the ear/fringe dart and the underside neck dart? You can leave it as is, and tuck it into a fold when the horse head is stuffed.
Or you could join the ends of the darts (sew on the wrong side of the fabric) so that it is a smooth line. You choose.

Step 17

Leaving the tube wrong side out, sew long running stitches about 1" below the edge AB of the horse head, all around the circumference. This is to gather the horse snout shut.

Step 18

Pull to gather, and wrap the thread around it (it will be bulky) a few times, then tie off in a good strong knot. Cut off the excess thread.

Turn the entire horse head right side out - the snout will be all puckered up like so.

All the sewing on the horse head is done! Step 19

Stuff the horse head, and insert the dowel/mop stick in position. Gather the bottom edge of the head around the stick, and hot-glue in place. Wrap yarn or cord around it to flatten the gathers.

Step 20

Wrap and hot-glue ribbon over the yarn and gathers for a neat finish.

Step 21

Cut open the loops in the mane and fringe, and trim to length.

Your stick horse is complete!

Now we will make the bridle. Note that I didn't include the exact dimensions of the parts of the bridle, because each bridle will be different, depending on the final size of the horse head after stuffing.

Step 22

Measure around the snout of the horse,

around the area just behind the ears

and the distance between the two positions.

The bridle is essentially two loops of webbing (or stiff ribbon, if you like) that are connected by a long U that will form the reins. Measure and cut out three lengths of webbing:

one for the snout loop (include overlap allowance)

one for the behind-the-ears loop (include overlap allowance)

one for the reins.

Finish the cut ends of the webbing so they don't fray - you can use fray check, fold over like a hem and stitch down, or you could use the candle method (for nylon webbing).

Step 23

First sew closed the two loops that will go around the snout and behind the ears. Then cut a long piece for the reins - the cut ends will be sewn to the outside of the snout loop. Try this on your horse and mark the position of the behind-the-ears loop along the rein loop. If you look at the picture below, this behind-the-ear loop is not perpendicular to the rein loop, because of the slant of the neck. Now your horse is completed AND has a bridle and reins!
Some questions I anticipate:

Q I can't get the pattern to print out as letter-size. Can you email me the pattern?

A No. I apologize on behalf on my iMac, if your computer and mine are incompatible. It happens sometimes. Please do the best you can. I don't have the time to email patterns out individually. And no, I don't wish to upload a pdf version onto a free-download site, either.

Q Are you going to do a tutorial on the unicorns?
A No. They are the same as the horses, just white, and with a horn.

Q Are you going to show us how to do the horn?
A No. It's not difficult. It's just a skinny cone. Cut a triangle with a curved bottom edge and sew it up into a cone.

Q Yes, but how do you attach it to the forehead?
A I'm going to eat nutella now.

And now - the giveaway! I am giving away this horse head - no more sewing needs to be done on it. You will need to provide your own stuffing, dowel, ribbon and glue to assemble a stick horse from it. There is also no bridle/reins - you'll have to make your own. So it's only the unstuffed horse head, OK? In the picture, I rammed random lumpy softies inside it to pad it up to give you an idea of what it will look like when it is stuffed.

If you'd like to win it, just leave a comment on this post by bedtime Friday Feb 4. Please make sure there is an email address at which I can contact you if you win. I can ship internationally, so any one in the world can enter. I'll pick a commentor at random on Saturday Feb 5th.

My daughter would love it if I made her a horse like that! Of course, it would be much easier on me if I won the head you are giving away (does that sound morbid or what?) and just had to stuff it and do the bridle and such.

Brilliant. I had forgotten about these until I read your post. My # 3 boy will love it, he keeps saying, 'riding on my pony called mascapooh!' Don't ask? We still haven't figured out where he got that from! :) Course, If he has one, the other 5 chillins will want one too! :) I'll be busy.

Your horsie is totally awesome! Every stick pony I have found is either too big, too small or had hard plastic eyes (not so good when the boys a hitting each other with them!)so now I know what to do with all of DH's old jeans! Thanks for a great tutorial.

LiEr, you are wonderful! I bought dowels ages ago to make my kids stick horses (after seeing yours), but hadn't had the guts to try it yet. Now I have no excuses! Other than house cleaning, but that's more a good reason to MAKE the horses. Cleaning can always be procrastinated, right? =)

I've been stalking your blog for a month or so now and am embarrassed to say that this is my first comment. You do such amazing and fun things with so many different materials. The first post I read was the one with the cardboard cars. My sister sent me a link after I had told her about making a puppet theatre for my 3 year-old out of an old box. You put my little cardboard creation to SHAME!!! I was almost embarrassed of it, but love it still because of the fun my daughter and I have had playing with it (even if its not worthy of a blog post). We'd love for this little guy, I'm calling him Pablo, to come live at our house!

Once again, you have amazed me! If I had only an ounce of your talent, I would be grateful! My girls would love this, so even if I don't win, now I know how to make them one! Thanks for yet another fantastic tutorial!

I have been reading your blog for about 8 months now. Oh how I love your creations! This horse is so fantastic. It puts my store-bought horse to shame. I also have to tell you that we have some tiny piglets at our house that are soon going to have some chicky friends. I also adore your fairies and their mushroom house. You are truly a talented woman. I promise to comment more often! Thanks for the great post.shawnandmindy at hotmail dot com

Great tutorial, thanks! This reminds me of the horse my mom made from a sock for my sister and I when we were little. This horse would get a lot of mileage out of our 3 boys! ajoyburg (at) gmail (dot) com

Oh my, I did not even see at first that there is a giveaway involved! WOW!And your tutorial is SO awesome. I am going to have to link to it on my two blogs! People have asked me - on the German blog - how to make it. I was thinking maybe I do a tutorial when I have to make a stickhorse for little man. But yours is SO SO SO good. I wish I would have had it before I made mine. Would have saved me some hazzle. :-) I really struggled with the ears and the mane ...

Anyway, here is my email-address in case I win. ulli-xox [at] web [dot] deOff to send some people over to enter!!!

Oh my gosh this is so cool!! My nephew is OBSESSED with horses. Like obsessed.He tries to ride anything that looks like it could be ridden like a horse! 3 rocking horses and he is only 19 months haha! He would LOVE this!

Thanks for the tutorial and all the wonderfull projects. I'd really love to win the give-away!!! I'm a mother of 2 (4 and 2) and pregnant with our third. So I have lots of things I want to make and things I still have to finish. So winning something that is almost done for one of my kids would be great!

I live in the Netherlands and my email adress is:jacky.de.vos@zonnet.nl

I'd love a chance to win - kanddbk at msn dot com Filing your tutorial away for future gift giving in this house of three little girls (and three bigger boys). :) Thanks for sharing - and I love your honesty in the Q&A at the end. Made me smile! :) Maybe I should go find my nutella too....

These are just toooo cute! I love you blog ans aspire to sew like you. We got a nice sewing machine 3 Christmas ago and I've never figured out to use it. A friend came ver and made skirts with my girls so hopefully she's going to help me figure this thing out. Between your blog and her, I might actually learn to sew! My 2 year old would just love to have this horse. dawn@warrenbusinessassociates.com

Thanks for this! My first horse was a stick horse that was probably the best gift I ever got as I was born a horse lover. I have had horses for years now and ridden more children for the first time than I can begin to count...several have gone on to become horse owners. Several now have new babies of their own. I would love the horse head to finish for one of my new prodigees. bevbailey@twlakes.net

Thank you, thank you, thank you!I have been thinking about making such horses for a while (hence this collection of worn & torn jeans ;-) ) but I am just no good without a pattern... Very happy to see this one turn up on your inspiring site. I love your creativity and your sense of humor - I had such a good laugh with the home-made space invaders posts the other day :-D

I saw your original post about the stuffed horse awhile back and was happy to find your own tutorial on it now. I *still* haven't gotten around to making one for my dtr. *Sigh* happens with most projects. Lier, you're SO talented. You're simply amazing. Thanks for sharing your talents online with tutorials. Rebecca rebecca at bookfamine dot com Thanks!

Hi, this is sooo cute. We have two girls, one of them turns 4 on saturday and the other 3 i august, they both LOVE horses. And luckily i have a whole pile of old jeans in a box :o)Thank you for sharing a great tutorial, as always!Linda - lerolai

I just learned how to sew with a real live sewing machine and have been searching the internet looking for something else to make other than a pillow!!!! Stick horse is the answer - with the felted horse food! Love it! I'm thinking sugar cubes are also in my stick horses future....sugar cube = mini square pillow - I think I can figure that one out! Thanks for the awesome blog and great creative ideas!!!

I discovered your blog when I went searching for stick horse ideas. I happened to find the blog about "Strawberry" and "Puzzle." I liked how you used something other than the demin for the nose. I made one and gave it to my niece for Christmas. I must say I think I did the mane the hard way. I threaded a needle with a 4-ft length of yarn and sewed every loop, cut them, and tied them. Very time consuming! I also left the leg in a tube shape, I didn't cut it so it would lay flat. I think I will try it your way. I need to make another for my nephew now. Thank you for the chance to win. I love to read your blog and see what you have been up to. You are a very talented lady!plainviewranch@nctc.net

Ok, so it sounds like maybe you don't want to explain how to attach the unicorn, however...I'm making six of these for party favors at my daughters unicorn b-day party on March 5th and am not sure how to go about it. Should I stuff it then hand sew it on or cut a whole in the main pattern, or...? Well, I'm not a beginner, but lets just say that I'm still working on my sewing skills. Plus, since I'm making six, I'm hoping to do it the easiest way.

I LOVE your pattern, it is just what I was looking for. And it really makes me want to cut up some old jeans. Hope you can help! Thanks!

I absolutely love your blog and how creative you are. You've been an inspiration, and being a stay-at-home mom, I use many of your ideas to entertain my 2 year-old.I tried your tutorial yesterday and, although it's not perfect as your horses and unicorns, I think mine turned out really cute and my kid loves it. Thanks you so much for sharing!

Here's the link in case you wanna take a look:http://foramazingpeople.blogspot.com/2011/03/casinha-para-passaro-birdhouse.html

Honey, I love your horse and would like to post it on my blog, not for money but to show his work that I found very cute. Go there on my blog and see if you allow me to post his work with the pap, of course giving all due créditos.Caso you like my blog, do it well.

Thank you so very much for sharing this! I live in Kentucky, and to celebrate the upcoming Kentucky Derby my daughter's kindergarten class is having a Derby/Mother's Day tea. The mom's are supposed to make/bring derby hats and the kids will have stick horses. You don't happen to have any Derby hat ideas, do ya??? Thanks again!-Leslie

These are GORGEOUS! I am by no means a good (or frequent) sewer but this totally had me dusting off the ole Bernina and raiding my stash for parts! I've managed quite creatively to upcycle lots of old bits of fabric for my horses and had to buy very little but I have one problem...

Does anyone have any tips on how to make my horses bend more at the neck, they just look like tubes, despite following the neck dart almost exactly! Help!I'd appreciate any suggestions, thanks! :D

Your tutorial was WONDERFUL! I just finished my stick horse and blogged about it here: http://allthisforthem.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-stick-horse-for-christmas.htmlI can't wait to see my daughter's face on Christmas when she receives it. I am so happy I could make her one. Thank you for the great pics and directions! :) Happy holidays!

Lier, this is great. Am gonna need to make this for the kids' school book festival where the theme is Cinderella. Am not as ambitious to make the Cinderella dress and B wants to go as a horse! But just want to know how far into the horse head do we insert the stick? I'm wondering if it will need to go in quite a fair bit so that the head doesn't flop around?

Van: I poked the stick into my horse head as far as it would go but without being able to feel the end of the stick through the snout. So if you place your hand on the snout/forehead and you can feel the stick end, withdraw the stick a bit until you can no longer feel the end.

For folks trying to get this to print out on paper the right size - when you click on image - click again to enlarge picture. You will notice your cursor has a plus or minus. If you click on it after you have clicked on it once to look at - the size will increase and then right click on image and click print.

Hello and Welcome!

I am a gratefully unemployed mom of three girls, all of whom are growing up much too soon! I like piles of warm, fresh laundry, the smell of salt air near the beach where I used to live, making lists, anything round (like heads) and the quiet evenings sitting with the man of the house after the kids are in bed.

Copyright

You are welcome to link to this blog and to any post on this blog and use ONE or TWO photos for that purpose. Do not use photos of my children. You are welcome to pin images from my blog, if those photos do not have my children's faces in them. Please contact me if you want to use the text on, or more photos from, this blog. Do not post my tutorials on your sites. Do not translate tutorials from this blog into other languages on your site. The ideas and instructions in the tutorials are free - but please use them to only make stuff for yourself or for gifts and not to sell. Ta! For more information, this and this might be helpful.